By: Charles Jay
Manny Pacquiao gets back into the ring after a couple of years as he takes on Yordenis Ugas for the WBA welterweight title. It’s scheduled for twelve rounds on Saturday night, coming from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The price through Fox Pay-Per-View is $74.99, and yes, you can bellyache about it all you want, but we’re concerned about other “prices.”
A lot of people are asking by now, “Pacquiao vs. WHO-gas?” But it’s one thing to make a joke or two. It’s no joke when you’ve got money on the line.
And that’s why the opinions of “experts” don’t mean as much if there isn’t any cash behind it.
So on what basis can that cash be wagered? Well, for some of the propositions that are on the table, there is relative consensus. But on others, there’s some disparity to take note of.
Yordenis Ugas may be unknown to most of the general public – at least relative to the original opponent, Errol Spence – but he is not being totally disrespected by the betting public.
Pacquiao is the favorite, to be sure, but the prices we’ve seen vary. The worst price we’ve seen on him (i.e., the worst for those looking to back him), which isn’t part of a peer-to-peer exchange is -567 at a British-based sportsbook (we’re not directing you away or toward any individual book).
The best value we have found on Pacquiao is -330 (which means you will lay $3.30 for every dollar you hope to earn). And then there are a lot of prices of -350 out there. In fact, between -350 and -400, that’s where most of the prices can be found.
As far as Ugas is concerned, there isn’t a whole lot of room between the high and low. The best price we have seen on him is +300, and that is posted at a lot of sportsbooks. And it goes as low as +260 in a number of places as well. So mostly everything else is positioned in between those numbers.
There are other kinds of bets, obviously. You can wager on the TOTAL ROUNDS the fight will go. And even though there are outlets at which the number can be adjusted, the most popular total on the fight is 10.5 rounds.
You may believe the fight is going the distance, or very close to it. If you do, you are looking at an “Over,” and the best price on that, as far as what we’ve observed, is -200. So the betting public “favors” this bout going some rounds. And to give you some perspective, the price that offers the lowest payback is -265, which we have found at a few sportsbooks.
When it comes to the “Under” (at 10.5 rounds), the worst you’ll get is just +140, but there are better numbers for you out there. We’ve actually seen +215, and if you are following along a little, you’ll see that there is a “scalp” available, which happens when you can take a price that is higher than the price you’d have to lay – on the same bet (referring to the -200 on the “Over” we referred to above).
Obviously, those bets aren’t with the same sportsbook. You’ll have to do your own shopping, unfortunately; we aren’t going to direct you on how to execute the scalp.
If you want a greater degree of exactitude, you can wager on the fight to GO THE DISTANCE. Prices range from -162 to -187 to do just that, and from +125 to +138 to end earlier.
There is a distinction between total rounds and ROUND BETTING, which consists of a wager on the exact round in which the fight will end.
We’re not going to go over every round and the odds that correspond to it. But we will tell you that in Round 8, you can get as high as 18-1 (+1800) on him to end the fight then.
And of course, you can bet on him to score a first-round knockout. The consensus price on this is +5000 (50-1), but you can get as high as +6600 on it.
To sum up things for Ugas, you can place a wager on him to win in any individual round from six (6) to ten (10), and for that you can get odds of 66-1 up to 100-1 on all of them, depending on what sportsbook you visit.
When you wager on the EXACT RESULT you are combining two events – a winner of the fight and usually whether the fight will end inside the distance.
So for example, you can wager on Pacquiao by decision (this also might include the instance of a technical decision), and what you’d be looking at is something between +110 and +120, in most cases. And if you like Pacquiao to end the fight inside the 12-round distance (or win by disqualification), and for that, you’ll get a better price. We’re seeing a range between +160 and +180.
For Ugas to win by a decision, we’re looking at around +450on the high end, and, if you don’t shop around enough, you could find yourself as low as +350. As far as him winning by a KO, TKO or DQ, that can go as high as 14-1 (+1400) or as low as 9-1 (+900).
It can be sage thinking to do the exact result wager, particularly in those instances when you feel very strongly about the favorite because instead of laying a price, you are suddenly taking it.
Remember, as always, that odds can change leading up to the bout, and customarily this happens a lot in the 24 hours or so prior to the bout, as more money comes in.
And good luck!
